


when the mirror crashed i called you

by wayonwayout



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-02
Updated: 2016-05-02
Packaged: 2018-06-06 00:10:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6729088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wayonwayout/pseuds/wayonwayout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zach falls easily, just not for people. (Or, three times they kissed in Berlin.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	when the mirror crashed i called you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [the_seaward](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_seaward/gifts).



> happy birthday to tumblr user murdersanta, my forever worst favourite [skull emoji]
> 
> title is from "take my breath away" by berlin, because obviously. none of this is true, all of it is lies, if you know anybody by the names used in this work of capital-f-Fiction please back-click now. many many thanks to tumblr user markcat for cheering me on while writing this <3

 

_dear berlin: you already know i have a crush on you. but this time things got a little more serious didn't they. we should talk. i'll call._

_\- @zacharyquinto_                 

 

 

_April 2009_

 

Berlin is sweeping skies, ivory architecture, and the gleam of lights off the Spree visible overhead from their plane as they’d made their approach. If Zach were less professional (read: ambitious, and also not a complete moron) he’d ditch the press prep to go walk along its banks the way his feet are itching to. As it is, he restrains himself to craning his neck at the windows in the car. The city rushes by, stately and coolly impersonal.

He is in _love_. If he could marry a city, he’d marry this one. Is that taking things too fast?

“Live your dreams, man,” Chris says when Zach asks.

Zach blathers like an idiot during the press conference, and dresses to kill for the premiere to make up for it. People are screaming his name -- he’s still not used to that -- but he keeps forgetting himself and staring out past their heads, at the skies and the arches on the horizon. His heart flutters every time. Zoe elbows him as she goes past; _head in the game, Quinto_. Zach rubs at his side -- she’s all angles, Zoe -- and shoots her a mock scowl. Over her shoulder, he can see Chris laughing at him from the other side of the carpet.

“You’ll get yours, Saldana,” he says, holding his glare even as he signs the next thing pressed into his hands.

“She could take you,” Chris calls.

There’s a reply on the tip of his tongue and his manager’s glare burning his spine. Figuratively. From afar. He smirks at Chris and nothing slips out. He’s a goddamn professional and his manager is _scary_ , even figuratively and from afar, and she’s also _right_.

One more year. Maybe two.

He signs another picture of his face, _sans_ pores.

They do shots after the premiere is over, like they have in every other city. Unlike every other city, they have an afternoon flight and the evening off tomorrow, so it doesn’t end there. Karl, who has friends of friends of friends in every city of the world like the established name that he is, knows about a club that’s usually pretty chill about celebrities -- and, yes, it’s still bizarre that they qualify now. It’s not far so they walk. The streets spread open before them, buzzing as the evening settles in. Everything in Berlin is _stacked_ , like old bookshelves or good china or the view of the mezzanines from a stage. It fits together and he wants to fold himself into it.

“I think that’s maybe _more_ worrisome than the marriage thing,” Chris says when Zach tells him this.

“Worrisome,” Zach says, “Nice.”

Chris smiles and Zach --

It’s like this. Chris is great, and Zach could not be happier to have spent the past year agonizing over this movie with him. He looks forward to hopefully-years of working together, if the movie takes off the way the buzz says it will. It’s going to be good. Zach is going to make sure it’s good. Zach is _not_ going to fuck it up.

There’s no line at the club and they find a booth easy, dumping coats while John hits the bar for shots. He comes back with three for every person, one tray in each hand and every colour of the rainbow represented in little glasses marked _K. H._ “If anyone looks over this way, Anton, duck under the table,” he says, to which Anton responds that he is _twenty_ , thanks, and the legal age here is sixteen which he knows because he _checked_.

“Sweet child,” Zoe coos, then downs her shots like a pro. “Okay, who’s dancing with me?”

“If you pit a Scot and a Russian against each other in a drinking game,” says Chris, inspecting the way the pink of his shot lights up under the strobes, “who wins?”

“God, don’t give them ideas,” Zach says, and swallows his third with a wince. “Zoe?”

She hooks her elbow through his, angular as ever, and drags him out onto the floor, where the music swallows up Pegg’s protestations that he’s _English, fuck you very much!_

The alcohol hits him just right a few songs in, and then it matters less that he doesn’t understand half the lyrics blaring over the speakers. Zoe can _move_ , but he doesn’t embarrass himself too much beside her. The music builds, insistent, self-possessed like the city outside, and he lets himself go loose, fold into it.

A hand squeezes his arm; “Hey,” Chris says, and Zach wipes away sweat at his temples and smiles back.

Chris -- okay, Chris can’t dance. He _almost_ has rhythm, though, and he has enthusiasm in spades. Zoe almost falls over laughing but Zach -- Zach’s just feeling good, and warm, and more relaxed than he pretty much ever does, and he gets one hand on Chris’ belt and reels him in, lifting the other to just under Chris’ ribs. “You’re a mess,” he yells, and Chris laughs, breathless, chest rising and falling under Zach’s hands.

“When am I _not_ ,” Chris yells back. He twists at the neck to meet Zach’s gaze, grinning, and his eyes flash blue in the crashing lights.

Zach swallows against his own moment of breathlessness, and shoves at Chris’ hip. “Like this,” he says.

“Cho!” Zoe calls, and John and Anton join them. Zach lets go of Chris’s hip; if it weren’t for the lingering warmth at his palm he would almost believe they’d never been that close at all.

A new song comes on with a hook in English. Chris cheers, bright-eyed, and Zach has to go back to the booth to have a drink or three because it’s been a year and he still has no idea what to do with Chris, ever, like, as a human being.

Three drinks and ten songs later he has to duck into the men’s washroom, which is sleekly black except for one wall which is covered corner to corner in graffiti. He loves it. He loves this city. He never wants to leave. The rest of the press tour can go on without him, the rest of the series, the rest of his whole fucking life as long as he never has to step beyond the city limits again.

Is that more grim than worrisome? He can’t tell anymore. He should ask Chris.

Chris, fortuitously -- great word -- is leaning against the back wall beside the hallway from the washrooms, just out of the lights. He grins, sloppy and earnest, when he sees Zach.

“Zachary,” he says, so Zach says, “Christopher.”

“This place is great,” Chris says, “I never want to leave.”

“I was just thinking the same thing,” Zach says, not looking at the long lines of Chris’ body against the wall, the stupid way he’s still swaying his shoulders to the beat.

“We’ve _got_ that, man,” Chris says, “Connection, you know? Like _that._ ”

Zach can’t help the answering grin that breaks across his face, and he settles against the wall beside Chris. “Yeah. Yeah, man. Like _that_.”

“You and me, man,” Chris says. And -- one moment, he’s leaning there, looking up at Zach with that smile and eyes open like a book, and the next, he’s leaning in, pressing his mouth to Zach’s, smelling like the dance floor and expensive cologne.

Zach pulls away first, heart pounding, glancing frantically around to see if anyone noticed. There’s no one around, not that he can tell, but -- fuck. When he looks back to Chris, Chris’ eyes are still closed, and he’s swaying a little on his feet.

“Whoa,” Chris says.

Zach swallows once, then again. “Okay, drunkie,” he says. “Let’s get you some water, huh? If you end up in the hospital before the night is out J.J. will have my ass.”

“Wouldn’t want that,” Chris mumbles, and he follows Zach docilely. Zach tries not to think about how hot Chris’s skin is under his fingers as he drags him along by the wrist; he tries not to think about how his mouth is still tingling.

Fuck.

He stops them at the bar to grab a pitcher of water, then drops it and Chris off at the booth, where Karl and Simon are sitting, upside-down cups stacked between them. “Patient for you, doctor,” Zach says, shoving Chris down.

“Damn it, Quinto --” Karl huffs; Zach gives him a finger-wiggle wave and disappears back into the crowd on the dance floor. Zoe finds him and wraps her arms around his neck, moving with him; finally, his heart rate slows. John and Anton are still there, dancing like idiots, and Zach huffs a laugh over Zoe’s shoulder.

“You okay?” she says, quiet in his ear.

He pulls back and grins, easy as anything. _Sans_ pores. (It makes sense in his head. There’s literary -- something. Chris would know, or, he would if he were sober.)

“Of course,” he says, and a few songs later, he really is.

Chris is the last one in the lobby the next afternoon, squinting faintly and tripping over his bags as he sets them down like he left his brain behind in the hotel room. He gives Zach a sheepish grin, and Zach rolls his eyes. They don’t mention it.  


 

_April 2013_

 

They end up at the same damn club, because of course they do. It’s not like Zach has been agonizing over every moment of their last time in Berlin all together together since the plane touched down. That would be irredeemably pathetic, and he makes a solid effort to be only a little pathetic, ever, and only when he really can’t help it. _This_ can be helped. It’s been four years, for fuck’s sake.

“It’s a tradition,” Zoe insists; “A tradition of one year and never again in the time since?” Karl says. Karl is right, objectively, but Zoe wins anyway. She usually does.

It’s not _exactly_ the same. They walk, and there’s no line, and John goes for the drinks, but Zach catalogues the differences for his own sanity. The dance floor is less crowded, for one. They take fewer shots collectively. As they drove through town, earlier, he realized he still _loves_ the city but he doesn’t want to _disappear_ into it anymore, which was nice. He’s dressed better. So is Chris, for that matter, in a dark blue dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Zach leans close and presses his forearm over Chris’s on the table, snaps a pic and puts it up on instagram. Normal. Super, super normal and friendly behaviour. He is _killing_ this.

More differences. Chris doesn’t buzz in the same way, quietly manic, like he fits his skin a little better, or he’s become a little more comfortable with the public eye. He’s the first to follow Zoe out onto the dance floor this time. He’s -- no, he’s still pretty much an embarrassment.

Zach considers the drink John put in front of him, but as far as he’s concerned, the night could use a few more differences still. He leaves it behind with his jacket as he heads for the floor.  

It’s good -- of course it is. He loves these people, in the kind of awful, sincere way he can only say in an interview where most people will assume he’s lying anyway. It’s funny how the whole public persona thing actually allows him space to be more honest than he’d otherwise be comfortable with, in a weird way. If he thinks about it too long he’ll give himself a headache, and he prefers to leave that sort of thing to his shrink. But Anton is trying to dougie, and Zoe is _actually_ dougie-ing, and Chris is singing along to the half-German remix of some _One Direction_ song that’s blasting from the DJ booth. And he loves them.

Chris grabs him by the bicep. “Don’t make that face,” he yells, “Pop culture is still a valid form of --” The rest is lost under the noise of the club.

“We’re in _Star Trek_ ,” Zach yells back. “I understand the value of pop culture just fine, Chris.”

“But do you _appreciate_ it? Do you? Are you sure?”

“Shut up and dance,” Zach yells, and Chris grins, right up in his face. He’s still got his fingers around Zach’s arm.

Zach’s stomach drops.

He gives it the rest of the song to see if that cold feeling, like he’s lost the beat and can’t get his feet back into it, will pass. It doesn’t. Maybe, he thinks, maybe he should have had that shot. Better to be drunk and thoughtless than -- but then what if it had happened _again_ \-- or what if _he’d_ gone for it this time instead --

“I’m gonna go have a smoke,” he says, nowhere near loud enough. Chris nods anyway. He’d been looking at Zach’s lips.

For fuck’s sake. Is there something in the air here?

Outside, he drapes his jacket over his shoulders without bothering with the sleeves and lights up. He can’t for the life of him remember if Berlin has this-many-feet-from-entryways laws, so he wanders down to the street, then crosses, following the inexorable pull of the river. It’s quiet. He brings his cigarette to his lips and drags in an inhale, like the calm he’s looking for is hiding just past the filter.

Footsteps ring off the street behind him. “Hey,” Chris says, “you good?”

“Yeah, bro,” Zach says, then grimaces. He’s called Chris “bro” _four times_ today, which is approximately four more times than he has ever said it with any measure of seriousness before. Jesus Christ.

“You’re such a frat boy today,” Chris says, drawing level with him. Zach glances over; in the dim light, there’s something considering in Chris’s eyes. It makes him nervous.

“I’m picking up the slack for you,” Zach says. “You almost looked like a civilized adult earlier.”

That three-piece suit is going to haunt Zach’s fucking dreams.

“Well thanks, Zachary.” Chris steals his pack and lighter from his jacket pocket. Zach looks away from the purse of his lips around the cigarette as he lights it, and stares out across the river instead.

“You wanna walk?” Chris says.

“Yeah, sure,” Zach says, then turns to look fully at him. “You want to get your coat first?”

“It’s April. One of the others will grab it for me.”

Zach rolls his eyes. “Fine, but you’re not stealing mine if you get cold.”

The music fades behind them as they head off along the canal. It’s nearly midnight and the skies are fully dark with a heavy moon hanging over the horizon; lamplight from the street reflects in the rippling waters and, when Zach glances sideways, off the angles of Chris’s face. It goes soft and white against the smoke of Chris’s exhale.

Zach looks back at the river; it’s safer.

He doesn’t want this to be awkward. There was an unspoken understanding, and they were _fine_ , and now they’re here again and it’s like he can’t push it back far enough, can’t leave the past where it should lie. It was just a stupid drunken misstep. He is a damn adult and he should be able to --

“Did you know,” Chris says, “a few years back, a collective of poets dropped like ten thousand poems on this city to protest for peace?”

“No,” Zach says automatically, startled from his thoughts. “What? No, I didn’t know that. What the hell, how do _you_ know that?”

“No reason,” Chris says, fast. He fusses with his cigarette; in the low light, his cheeks look a little pink. Zach stares. “I was just, like, googling. Google surfing. Like the kids do. The _youth_.”

“Really.”

“Shut up,” and, yeah, he’s _blushing_. Zach is never going to let him live this down.

“No, please, tell me more. What else did you find out while googling my _favourite city_?”

“Oh, is it? I hadn’t noticed. You never, like, talk about it, or tweet about it, or --”

The laugh takes Zach by surprise, surging warm from his gut without his permission. Chris continues, a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth; he’s looking straight-on at Zach now, and Zach -- Zach is looking back, too busy laughing to remember why he wasn’t in the first place.

“You have been the very _soul_ of restraint -- _abstemious_ , really --”

“ _Abstemious_?”

They have to pause then, so Zach can lean against the rail bordering the canal and catch his breath.

“You’ve been holding onto that one, haven’t you?” he manages finally.

“I hoard them all year in preparation for these tours,” Chris says. “Well, years.”

The laughter fades in Zach’s throat. He stares up at Chris, who ducks his head, raises the cigarette to his lips and then swears to find it’s burnt to its end. He drops it to the ground and shivers.

“Hey,” Zach says, realizing suddenly that, in his determination to keep things capital-n-Normal this past day -- and this past tour, and this past year -- he hasn’t said it at all; “Hey, I missed you.”

It’s not like they never saw each other during the three years between the first movie’s release and the table read for _Into Darkness_. They texted, and they got lunch when they were in the same city. But -- no. It wasn’t the same. You can’t share a cigarette via text, huddled together in the studio parking lot after 2 a.m. in mid-December because Universal doesn’t allow smoking inside (not that anyone does! Obviously. Which Zach generally approves of, but goddamn was that cold.) You can’t steal the last of the other person’s favourite beer from their fridge, _just because_ , via text. You can’t bang on their door any time you’re bored, _just because._

Although. They didn’t really do that as much during filming this time around, either.

“I’ve been kind of a shitty friend, huh,” Zach says. He aims for steady and mostly succeeds.

“No,” Chris says, “No, Zach, the _fuck_ \-- just because I’m -- stupid, and tired, and craving validation, or something, that doesn’t mean --”

Zach shakes his head, and Chris stutters to silence, so all that’s left is the night-time rumblings of the city and the water lapping against the stones behind Zach’s back.

“I shouldn’t have been an avoidant dick,” Zach says.

“I shouldn’t have kissed you,” Chris says.

Zach’s mouth is stupidly dry. And he remembers, suddenly, two more differences that he forgot to count earlier.

He’s _out_ now. And -- and Chris’s hair is longer than it was; sometime since the premiere the product he uses to smooth it back has lost its hold, and it falls into his eyes a little. It was so much shorter four years ago. He wants to run his fingers through it.

“Probably not,” Zach says; it feels like it rings around the inside of his chest, echoing. “I’ve lost a lot of time thinking about it, and I could have used that doing something productive. Honestly, Chris.”

Chris stares down at him. Zach doesn’t straighten up -- honestly, without the rail behind him holding him up, he’s not sure he could do this at all. The street is quiet; he reaches up and, curling his fingers around the back of Chris’s neck, pulls him down into a kiss. Lips to lips and he goes still, waiting to see what happens.

Chris makes a soft noise, and kisses him back.

It’s been four years. It would be romantic to say he hadn’t forgotten how Chris’s mouth felt, but he had. Screw romance, though; he gets it all fresh this way -- Chris’s hand at his waist, hesitant; the warm huff of breath against his lips between kisses; a sliver of blue, almost imperceptible in the dim light, behind flickering lashes.

Chris pulls away first this time, glancing around nervously, and it’s like the world falls back into place around their ears. An admittedly beautiful one, but, fuck, he could have gone a little longer without it.

“I, uh,” Chris says, and Zach nods.

“Trust me,” he says, “I know how it is.”

Chris ducks his head. He’s still flushed, and Zach wants to kiss him again more than pretty much anything.

“That was part of the reason why I shouldn’t have kissed you,” Chris says. “Because I was pretty sure I would end up doing it again. And, hey, look! Here we are.”

“It’s okay,” Zach says, aiming for dry and nailing it. “I’m pretty sure it’s something in the air here.”

Chris smiles weakly. “That’s gotta be it.”

“Come on,” Zach says. He nudges Chris back a step with his forearm between them, then straightens up. He pulls his pack out of his pocket and gets them each another cigarette. “I still missed you. Regardless of whether or not I get laid tonight.”

“You are such an _asshole_ ,” Chris says, but he’s grinning again, crooked but real.

“An asshole who missed you,” Zach says. “An asshole who’s going to try to be a better friend from here on.”

“Okay, okay,” Chris says. “I’m not a delicate flower, dude. You can chill a little.”

“Let me self-flagellate a little more,” Zach says, “have some self-respect, Christopher.”

He leans in to light Chris’s cigarette, then does his own.

“You know,” says Chris, “I’m pretty sure you only call me Christopher when you’re flirting.”

“I feel like this friendship just became even more confusing.”

Chris takes a long drag and laughs, smokey breath clouding in the air. The wind whips off the Spree, cooler than before, and he shivers. Zach rolls his eyes, shrugging his jacket off his shoulders.

“I _told_ you,” he says. He plucks the cigarette out of Chris’s fingers and shoves his jacket at him.

 

 

_June 2016_

 

There’s some fuck-up with the flights and they end up on a red-eye; they don’t make it to their hotel rooms until three in the morning the night before press. It’s late enough and he’s tired enough that Zach doesn’t even think about it. He drops his bag to the ground, kicks the door shut, and collapses into bed without even undressing. (And then, obviously, he wakes his sorry ass up an hour later because he’s uncomfortable, kicks everything off, and falls back asleep.)

Knocking at the door wakes him up shortly after nine. The sun is just breaking through the curtains he hadn’t thought to close the night before and, squinting against the light, he trips _twice_ over the clothes discarded around his bed as he gets up. He pulls on a t-shirt and some sweatpants from the top of his suitcase once he’s fully upright, and goes for the door. If it’s the paps he’s going to _murder_ someone.

It’s not. It’s Chris, which he really should have expected; Chris, with bedhead and tired shadows under his eyes and a bag that smells like pastry.

“I come bearing food,” he says.

Zach grunts something that is, even to himself, completely unintelligible.

“And coffee,” Chris says, jiggling his left elbow to emphasize the travel mugs tucked into it.

“ _There_ you go,” Zach says, and steps aside to let him in.

Chris sits on the edge of the bed like a civilized person so his crumbs land on the floor; Zach flops back against his pillows like a douchebag because he still can’t quite open his eyes all the way. He downs half the coffee first in one long go before digging into the scone-type-thing Chris brought him. It’s delicious, and it flakes and sticks to his fingers, and he falls in love with Berlin all over again with each bite.

Chris looks over at him as he licks his thumb clean, and, _right_ , they’re in _Berlin._  

Jesus, where is his brain?

“Hey,” Chris says, “Quinto.”

Zach swallows his last bite. “Pine,” he acknowledges.

“I’ve been thinking.”

The sunlight through the pale curtains does ridiculous things to his eyes. Zach squints some more to compensate. “Really,” he says.

“I’ve been thinking maybe it’s not the Berlin air,” Chris says, tapping his fingers against his thigh up on the bed. “Because if it was the Berlin air, I wouldn’t still think about it once we left the city.”

“Are we going to define what ‘it’ is, or just dance around it like teenagers for a while --”

“You,” Chris says, gaze steady and stupid earnest. “I wouldn’t be thinking about you, but I have.”

If it had been eight years ago, Zach would have bolted. If it had been four years ago, Zach would have turned it aside, as kindly as he could. Now --

“Okay,” Zach says. He presses his palms to the bedspread under him, nice white sheets, because he doesn’t know what else to do with his hands. “Okay.”

And if it had been eight years ago, or four years ago, Chris wouldn’t have kissed him. Not without alcohol and not while the sun was still up, because that was a first step towards promising things that he couldn’t have promised then. But he crawls up onto the bed, nudges Zach’s legs apart with his knee so he can settle between them, and cups his face, tipping his chin up to kiss him.

It says more, between them, after everything, than _I told my agent_ or _I’m ready to do this_ or anything else Chris could have said.

There’s no intruding _real life_ this time. Instead, there’s warm sunlight across Zach’s face, and the weight of Chris pressing him gently back into the pillows, and a sudden bite of raspberry at the corner of Chris’s mouth, sharp on his tongue.

“Zach,” Chris says, quiet like the stillness of the room could break if he spoke too loud; Zach, for his part, sort of feels like _nothing_ could break this room now that he has his hands at Chris’ ribs under the thin fabric of his shirt. Chris pulls back, but not far. He’s smiling. “You wanna show me Berlin today?”

Zach considers it for a second. “It’ll still be here after press,” he says, and Chris’s grin brightens. “Let’s stay in for now.”

“I mean, hypothetically, it might _not_ be --”

“Not now, Chris,” Zach says, and flips them over.

“If I find crumbs in my clothes after this, _you’re_ washing them.”

He kisses Chris against white, sunlit sheets; outside, the city sprawls, sensible and self-possessed and coolly distant. Chris snorts a stupid laugh when Zach’s fingers on his ribs catch on a ticklish spot, and Zach kisses his stupid grinning mouth, and lets himself fold into it.

 


End file.
